13 May 08

Trigger: Write a story associated with “nostaligia” using the following words included on a longer, brainstormed list: scouts, school days, family, girlfriends, old photos, Chevy, Beatles, touchstone

Touchstones

After many months of promises by me, and persistent reminding (I wouldn’t call it nagging) on the part of Paula, a recent blustery morning held me inside the house with no excuse or anywhere to go and thus I was finally forced into attacking the last of the pack boxes left from our move to France. As Paula was never lax to remind me, it was all my “stuff” – things that had been squirreled away by my mother and me during my childhood and school days in Indiana.

The retention of the errata of my life began on a vacation with my parents when I was nine years old with a visit to the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential library at his ancestral home in Hyde Park, just north of New York City. Amongst the more important world events documented at the museum were also exhibits of things from his youth and family history. With that in mind for when I was going to be famous, I never threw out anything, no matter how small or insignificant from my life’s meanderings. Well actually, I suppose I was just to lazy to clean my room of these things. Inexorably these trivial items grew into boxes of stuff which followed me around through my various moves over the years, ultimately making the trip to France when we moved here last year.

However, as Paula reminded me, the likelihood of fame striking me at this late time in life was infinitely less than me being targeted by a lightning bolt, I finally agreed that it was probably reasonable for me to eliminate my permanent collection intended for the Gerald Memorial Library. With avoidance no longer avoidable, I opened the door to the attic and brought down the boxes of my life with the intention of sorting through the ephemera, retaining only the truly important memorabilia of my life.

First out of a box was a large manila envelope containing papers, notes and projects I had created for various classes along with a complete collection of my report cards from my school days. I began to read the report cards with my marks listed next to the name of the teacher and found myself getting angry all again with the “B” given me by Mrs. Leona F********, the French teacher who had never been to France and, from what I could tell, had never actually heard the language spoken either. She did not seem to appreciate the squeaky voiced fourteen year old who corrected her pronunciation and had responded appropriately with my marks. But then, I have moved on and felt it better to let go of those report cards rather than for people to find out how poorly I had done. So there they all went, into the trash. Great, that only took 45 minutes of time!

Time seemed to stop as I reviewed and thought about each item as it came to hand and then shifted into boxes for keeping or into box of throwaway items for those things no longer important to me. Unfortunately the trash pile grew much more slowly than the others.

From a corner of the largest packing box, I pulled out the small wooden box which had contained my personal treasures of youth, odds and ends of items, easily disposed of, or so I supposed. Oh, there’s my boy scout whistle and compass. Better keep those for my next walk in the woods. The chestnut I found in the park on a picnic with family but then I can always pick up a chestnut here so out it goes. Now, I felt proud. I could throw away something I had kept for over 50 years. How about the ticket to the basketball tourney the year our high school club won the state championship? No, better keep that and bring it to our next reunion in 2010, if I go. The odd cufflink, it’s mate lost? No, my dad gave me those as my first pair so I can’t throw that out.

And so it went, each item bringing with it a whole memory of time and place. I was having ever more problems dispensing with these touchstones to my life. It was as if throwing out the item would erase the link and the memory at the same time like hitting the delete key on the computer.

Several hours passed and I had gone less than half way through my nostalgia trove. I began now to review the stacks of photos accumulated from even prior to my birth by my photo happy family. These would prove almost impossible to discard. There were photos of my parents from just after the war and their marriage while in Normandy followed by innumerable pictures of our holiday dinners. My mother was always the hostess of those affairs and it brought back the times of these family gatherings; my father’s mother whom I barely knew; long gone aunts and uncles; cousins who disappeared from my life over 40 years ago; faces of others whose names have been long lost. Photos taken of people sitting around my mother’s table for some Easter or Christmas or Thanksgiving or birthday dinner, chronicling the passage of my youth into manhood.

And then, out of the stacks of pictures was the one of me and ****** at the prom. Ah, the lovely ******, my first true heartthrob and heartache. In my rented tux, I was all gawky neck and skinny wrists and ankles sticking out at angles from the ill fitting rental. And next to me, a vision of cool, bouffant hair in full puff, white silk dress with a brilliant green sash around her small waist and feet in matching green pumps in perfect photo pose position. It was our first prom together after I had been smitten and I was lucky enough to borrow my father’s new 1964 Chevy Impala. Finally, after all those years of owning clunky station wagons, he had bought a beautiful coupe. I picked ****** up in style as we drove round to the various parties hosted by friends at their houses before the big dance, Beatles songs blasting from the single speaker in the car.

All that was going through my mind when suddenly Paula came into my office. “So, “ she asked. “Where is your trash pile?”

I pointed to the meager little gathering of items in the smallest of the cardboard boxes and said, “ Oh, it is so hard to have to choose what to get rid of.”

“Let me help” she said. She reached over and plucked the photo of ****** and me from my lap and put it onto the trash pile and said, “There are some memories you’ll just have to keep to yourself without reminders.”

Summoning up all my manly pride and courage I replied, “You are correct of course, dear”. Other than the small trash box, everything else went back up into the attic to await another day when perhaps there would be a stronger mind -and heart – to deal with my life’s bits.